Electric water heating kettles have high power ratings and are in frequent use in many domestic settings, therefore accounting for a significant proportion of the electrical energy consumed by the household. Unfortunately, a great deal of the energy consumed by electric water heating kettles is wasted due to the user heating more water than was actually required—the excessive amount of water being used being due to the inconvenience of metering the correct amount of water. The amount of energy wasted can be very significant, with an average potential saving of around 30% versus what would be required if the desired amount of water was actually boiled.
There have been numerous recent attempts to provide a kettle that allowed the user to boil only the water they actually need to boil, most of those attempts being variations about a single concept: viz. a kettle with a high capacity water reservoir as separate from a water heating chamber—a valve system allowing transfer of a portion of the water in the water reservoir to the heating chamber, the water reservoir being filled at a low frequency relative to the frequency of boiling. These types of kettles have numerous problems. One problem is that they are generally heavy, another is that their dynamics are hard to predict due to the centre of gravity having a significant range of movement, another is that they are generally large making them difficult to charge, another is that many users prefer to use ‘fresh’ water rather than water that may have been stored for some period of time—and another is that parasitic losses from water heating chamber to water reservoir are difficult to avoid.
Kettles of this type replace one problem with many more problems and do not provide the convenience that is actually demanded by the market. What is required is a kettle that is as convenient to charge accurately as current/prior art kettles are to charge inaccurately.
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention provide a kettle that is even easier to charge accurately than prior art kettles are to charge inaccurately.